Ladder-back chair with rush seat

Details

Date: c.1909 - 1910
Dimensions: 97.2 x 43.8 x 45.7
Object Type: furniture
Material: oak and rush seat
Catalogue number: G67
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.
Retailer: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: Presented by Miss Rhoda Wells, 1980.

One of a set of four chairs (see G68, G69, G70). An example is illustrated in Morris & Co.’s 1910/11 catalogue ‘Specimens of Upholstered Furniture’, no. 192 which was available in green or brown stain, priced at 14/- (=70 pence) with matching armchair no. 191, priced at 23/- (=£1.30p). The design is adapted from a traditional country type and is close to some of the furniture made by Ernest Gimson (see G56). The chairs were apparently re-rushed around 1970 by the Workshops for the Blind.

Details

Date: 1890-1892
Dimensions: 78.5 x 228.6 x 74.2
Object Type: furniture
Material: mahogany
Catalogue number: G64
Retailer: Kenton & Company (1891 - 1892)
Designer: Barnsley, Sidney Howard (1865 - 1926)
Credit notes: Presented by Mrs Anne Moro, 1978

This table (described in the records variously as an ‘architect’s table’, ‘refectory table’, ‘desk’) was made by Kenton & Co. around 1890-92. The firm, inspired by Morris & Co., was founded in 1890 by Ernest Gimson, Sidney Barnsley, W R Lethaby, Reginald Blomfield and others with the aim of designing and making furniture on Arts & Crafts principles. Lack of capital forced the company to disband in 1892, each partner taking a share of the remaining stock of furniture.
It would seem the table was acquired by the Barnsleys; according to Edward Barnsley, Sidney’s son (letter in WMG files, 3 December, 1979) “the mahogany table used to be in my uncle Ernest’s (Barnsley) sitting room library at Sapperton…. my memory is that I always thought it a very sensible, paracticial attractive piece. There was another one made on very similar lines but with drawers at the ends. Might have had two each end. With some inlay I think on edge of top, and on the drawer fronts, I think…” After the deaths of both Ernest and Sidney Barnsley in 1926, the table was acquired by architect, W R Lethaby.,The table appears in a photograph – one of a series taken at the Kenton & Co. exhibition at Barnard’s Inn, 1891 – on which are a series of mirrors designed by Reginal Blomfield. The table was lent by the donor to the Senior Common Room of the Central School of Art & Design for some years before donated to WMG.

Details

Date: c. 1890
Dimensions: 91.4 x 66.0 x 60.9
Object Type: furniture
Material: mahogany
Catalogue number: G61
Designer: Jack, George Washington Henry (1855 - 1931)
Retailer: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: Purchased with assistance from the V&A Purchase Grant Fund

George Jack probably designed this armchair for Morris & Co. around 1890. The wavy vertical rails under the arms are similar to a sideboard shown by Morris & Co. at the Manchester Jubilee Exhibition in 1887. When purchased the chair was patched with faded ‘Evenlode’ chintz, and reupholstered in ‘Lodden’ chintz in 1979, however it originally appears to have been upholstered in ‘Strawberry Thief’ chintz. Pieces of original fabrics and braid were retain. The armchair was originally purchased by owned by the parents of Francis Jane Lefroy whose house was furnished mainly by Morris & Co. in the 1890s.

Details

Date: c. 1885 - 1886
Dimensions: 127 x 45.7 x 50.8
Object Type: furniture
Material: mahogany
Catalogue number: G59
Retailer: Century Guild
Attributed designer: Mackmurdo | Arthur Heygate | 1851 | 1942
Manufacturer: Goodall & Co, King Street, Manchester
Commissioner: Boddington, Henry
Credit notes: Purchased with assistance from the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, Purchase Grant Fund

The chair is of exactly the same design as one shown by the Century Guild on their stand at the Liverpool International Exhibition, 1886. A photograph of the stand, taken by the London & County Photographic Co., shows the single chair on the left of the stand with a matching armchair nearby; both are upholstered in a fabric different to that on G59. (See also an illustration of the stand in The British Architect, Vol. XXVI, 1886, illustrated in article by Malcolm Haslam “A Pioneer of Art Nouveau; A H Mackmurdo”, Country Life, 6 March, 1975, p.576, illus.5).
The inscription “Boddington” on the label attached to G59 refers presumably to Henry Boddington, who commissioned extensive furnishings, decorative plaster-work and painted designs, stained glass and brass-work, from the Century Guild for his Cheshire country house, Pownall Hall. An article published in ‘The Art Journal’,1891 pp.329 – 335 and 353 – 357, reproduces a line-drawn illustration of the Dining Room (p.332) in which an armchair matching the single chair (upright, without arms) appears.

Object Type: furniture

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